But she's still in the process of finalizing how much Samsung should have to pay Apple.

And this week she dealt Samsung a blow, denying a request by Samsung to seal the results of a Dec. 10 request she made to Samsung. Judge Koh had asked Samsung last month to reveal unit sales of certain products over certain time periods. It is unknown what models precisely were requested, but they likely included the Galaxy S and Galaxy S II smartphones -- centerpieces of Apple's first infringement case against Samsung.

Samsung had pleaded with Judge Koh to keep those details out of the public eye, arguing that it would damage it from a competitive perspective. Judge Koh had little sympathy for the South Korean electronics company, though, siding with local firm Apple, who argued the information should be made public regardless of the damage to its rival.

quote: I am sure some day soon we will see them copy... to try to catch up with the competition.

Except it won't be catching up, it will be doing it right for the first time ever in the history of computing, AND IT WILL CHANGE YOUR LIFE! :) Seriously, though, they should and will copy this stuff, it makes sense, and that's how technology advances!

Exactly... And there is nothing wrong with it if Apple does copy these things. All companies build off the ideas of others. Its not about who thinks of the best thing, its about who can bring it to market at a price point that people will buy it at. That is called free market and its how business has always been done since civilization began. Then only "foul" going on here is Apple crying about it and suing as if they dont do it themselves.

I wonder what the honest answer would be if we could ask Steve Jobs what the iPhone would be if not for Palm and RIMM?

And if there was no Newton:"Whats a palm pilot?"And if there was no Larry Tesler at Apple: (Started the project after Steve Jobs was ousted in 1987)"Whats a Newton?"And if there was no Steve Jobs and Woz:"Whats Apple?"

Learn your history... it's easy enough with access to the internet. Products like the Android or iPhone have deep development roots and it's mere chance that someone came up with the idea before someone else. Give credit to where credit is do though. There were many smart people working their butts off under Steve's direction to make the iPhone. Small known fact that the tech in the iPhone was meant for a tablet, but Steve saw a market and directed the engineers to create a phone.It takes a good company to foster good chance taking which is why RIM is in the shitter right now.

ps It took years before the competition caught up with the original iPhone's UI snappiness

pps The tech industry as a whole needs to stop using patents as a crutch, but at this point with so much money on the line you would have to be crazy not to sue. It's just business. And its up to US citizens to vote people into Congress to affect change and make sense out of copyright and patents.

If you did, you would know that the Apple Newton and Palm Pilot both copied the earlier Psion product (The first PDA)... But that doesn't change my point, in fact it underlines it. ALL companies build off the ideas of others. Apple has a long history of copying other companies products and again, there is nothing wrong with that.

"it took years before the competition caught up with the original iPhone's UI snappiness"

It did. The initial iPhone was a huge homerun. Apple's reward for making that hit product was record profits. Now they have been caught up with and surpassed and they are suing instead of going back to innovating. THAT is the problem here.

Your examples are great illustrations of one of the current problems with IP law: they're not innovations worthy of protection. Nonsense like this is exactly why we've got companies spending more on lawyers than R&D.

You'd like to slow down innovation in order to protect a simple method for creating folders on a touchscreen. WHY?

I disagree. I see the merit in protecting IP work. It's very much similar to protecting a bunch of oil paint and canvas mixed together in a specific way to produce a highly valued work of art.

At its root, a painting that gains worldwide recognition and multi-million-dollar value is nothing more than a smearing of paints on a simple canvas. But the value comes not only from the way the smearing of paint was done, but also by whom it was done.

Anyone can spear paint on a canvas. But that doesn't lead to value. Anyone can produce a swipe-lock effect, but the originator of the effect takes the crown.

Part of protecting IP is creating reasonable criteria for determining which IP is valuable. I'm not discussing IP vs. no IP. I'm discussing protecting IP at a reasonable level vs. what we have now - which is skewed towards incumbents and legal posturing rather than innovation, research, and benefit for the consumer (i.e. ideas in line with the original intent of IP). If that ends up looking "anti-Apple", that may be because you care about Apple and only Apple - not the larger environment of technology and innovation.

What you fail to see is that you can make 1 million different paintings or more, the chances that 2 people come up with the same painting is virtually impossible, that's why you can put a copyright on it just so no one copies it.

On a smart-phone touch sensitive or not there are very few possibilities, if you want to unlock a phone and it's touch sensitive the very basic would be touch to unlock or touch and move to unlock, the barn at my grandmother farm has a slide to unlock door, there's really nothing new on a slide to unlock. The same with the two fingers thing to zoom, this has been around for ages on science fiction movies...

At the end of the day you use your fingers to operate a touch-sensitive device so it's perfectly normal to admit than you never really come up with a unique input method.

If Apple is starting to copy other companies in order to stay competitive then great for us - the consumer. Sounds like competition is working. I can only hope we see more tech adoptions (copying.). I do have to say, those 3D maps Apple has is pretty awesome, regardless of who invented what. I can care less who invents what as long as the consumer can benefit. Now they need to just fix the maps, since at this point the 3D maps are not trust-worthy at all.

"Intel is investing heavily (think gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours) in resources to create an Intel host controllers spec in order to speed time to market of the USB 3.0 technology." -- Intel blogger Nick Knupffer